Superheater......remember the railroads were taken over by the government during WW1 and ww2. The service was better! They made more money than ever! But that's what happens when you have a PRO RAIL government! The last 50 plus years since has been terrible with ticket taxes spent on roads and airports

Citibank is in trouble because they were permitted to do anything they wanted, and they did!

If I made 250000 a year, I would be glad to pay 10000 more in taxes to help out the country. Paying taxes is a sign of success. Losers don't pay taxes, cause they don't add value to anyone. Of course no one wants to pay more. But it also depends on what the government is spending it on.

You're not going to hear me say anything bad about a pro-rail government. The rich have had a great ride! Look where it's gotten us!

I did think it was funny that Al Gore left trains out of his trips and study of world temps. This fly and drive guy! The attack on coal which is the number 2 problem is because they don't want to attack the real problem.....CARS!

Hey I agree, but for years I tryied to tell railfans who wanted more smoke in their pictures of trains. It was a bad idea. They of course laughed at me.
Of course being a Lackawanna fan, I think smoke should be as clean as possible.
The plants do need to be cleaned up.

Interesting how the issue got handled during the election season. Once it had surfaced it was quickly suppressed and denied when it was feared that it might affect the voting in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Then just a couple months later, here it is in full force, obviously well organized and coordinated, being promoted and advertised for free by our supposedly "impartial" media. Looks like the same "formula" approach of demonizing the industry by creating a public frenzy that was used successfully on tobacco, the oil companies, the auto manufacturers, and more recently the banks.

PC

IMO most of this opinionating belongs in the many other forums that are for that purpose.
Before the flame wars begin, please recognize that many support a different point of view, and return to the subject that we all are here to learn and discuss amiably, Railway Preservation News, so we can continue to enjoy this wonderful website.

How clean do they need to be? How would you clean them up? I suspect they are already cleaner in terms of emissions than the Lackawanna locomotives ever were. The anti-coal movement wants coal plants to cut their CO2 emissions to zero. Is that necessary? Can we do that? What will it cost? If it were done, would coal burning plants be acceptable to the anti-coal movement?

My posting that the "tea party" had been covered in the local news was not in any way an endorsement of it or the folks who are looking so hard for a plot against coal or anything else. Those who will look for a plot will always find it, but is it really the case? And for the record, the government did not take over the railroads in World War II, although they did in World War I. Let's at least get the facts straight here.

The old saying "In war truth is the first casualty" well
it is as well in politics.
The zero carbon boys are interested in zero carbon
emissions, not what it costs or any collateral damage.
They don't care. So our request for exemption will
not carry much weight with them.
Start drilling the engine blocks.....

Given the media support, I suspect this movement will progress quite rapidly. Looking at their websites, it is ALL coal use that they are out to ban. Particularly interesting are the threats of "civil disobedience" gatherings at coal burning power plants. I wonder how long it will take before they protest coal use at the local tourist railroad?

PC

This is not the place to debate the existance of man-made climate change or cars vs. transit, which are major political issues of the day. But I do think we should be aware of three conditions: 1) The environmental left wing is orchestrating a propaganda campaign against coal (followed shortly by all fuels). 2) Many politicians are being drawn along (the governor of my state recently attempted to order the stoppage of all new coal and nuclear power-plant permitting). 3) Sooner or later this is going to slop over into the museum world, in the form of hostile regulatory or public-relations events.

My advice: Think ahead to what you'll do if coal-burning steam locomotives start attracting the kind of characters who protest military airshows for "glorifying war," or who attack people wearing fur coats in public. The more successful your promotion is at attracting attention to your museum, the bigger a target you become to people looking for a vehicle for their own propaganda. As cultural institutions we're not the most likely sites for this sort of thing, but if one protest group scores a lot of press coverage at a railroad museum, you may have to make a habit of inspecting your train for protesters chained to the wheels. Think how you'll ease these people off the property with a minimum of fuss, while putting your organization in the best possible light.

Do not doubt that an anti-coal campaign is well under way. When I was in Washington a week before the inauguration, in every subway station I traveled through, EVERY advertising space had been rented by a slick ad campaign featuring mermaids, abominable snowmen, leprechauns, and other mythical creatures holding lumps of coal, and bearing the legend, "There is no such thing as clean coal." And buying all the poster spaces wasn't enough: large banners hung from every vertical surface in the stations. This is what was seen by the thousands arriving by subway for the inauguration. It was designed to look cute, but felt to me like a hate campaign. I can't think of too many precedents for this in American history, and the ones I can think of are are all ugly. Let's hope it doesn't turn ugly on our property.

- Aarne H. Frobom

It sounds like a cap and trade system is right around the corner. I wonder how much that will cost historic steam locomotive operations.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29395517/

From the link:

"The Obama budget blueprint assumes that by 2012, the Treasury will be collecting $78.6 billion in new revenue from carbon emissions permits."

The report makes it sound like the discovery of an untapped bonanza of new revenue free for the taking. The one silver lining is that when an agenda is moving at 100 miles per hour, it loses its stealth advantage.

When somebody comes into a railway preservation forum and tries to SCARE us... I'd say that person is peddling political propoganda. Let's look at some of the falsehoods, shall we?

* Conflating "the renewable energy movement" and "the anti-coal movement". Nope. Renewable energy has a variety of advocates, only some of whom are anti-coal. And none of them are anti-preservation!

* Conflating "the Obama administration" with "anti-coal protests". That makes no sense. Protests happen when protesters DISAGREE with an administration. Were you afraid Bush might pull out of Iraq because of the hundreds of war protests?

* Invoking the phaseout of coal power plants to frighten steam-engine lovers. "Our fuel won't be available" is the incipient threat. Um, ever hear of the law of supply and demand? If coal plants are phased out, coal won't be worth a nickel a ton. Fuel will be affordable again!

* Claiming this "anti-coal protest" equates to a vast, activist anti-coal movement in America whose first agenda is to ban coal. No way. Not believable. Anyone who cares about the abolition of coal will first invest their passion in increasing the adoption of renewables. As said above, that works in our favor.

* The insinuation that renewable energy will be much more expensive. Maybe. But that's not relevant. The real question is whether it'll be as expensive as fossil fuels will be in the future. I thought that was a very important question, so I looked into it. I didn't want to be snowjob'ed by tofu-heads, so I only used data produced by oil companies or the Bush administration government. I can't relate my findings, you would accuse me of lying for ulterior motive. I suggest you look for yourself.

* The flat lie that environmentalism is a grand scam perpetrated to enrich certain people. I especially note how the most outrageous claims come from pseudonymous posters. As a former pseudonymous poster myself, I advocate its value for some things, however the anonymous trouble-maker is a sad internet cliche. Therefore I think anonymous posters should be held to a more strict interpretation of forum rules.

* "Smoggy automobiles are destroyed." Not true. For instance, I sold my old Datsun to BAAQMD for $650. At the behest of car collectors, BAAQMD publishes a list of cars they have bought, and any interested party is permitted to buy the car back out of the program. I've seen the list, there are a few classics in there. This is precedent for saving smog-buyback'ed locomotives.

* "the proposed smart grid will interrupt your power" - false scaremongering. Shame! The fact is, most of the things we do with electricity require only a tiny amount of electricity. However a few loads require tremendous amounts of electricity - A/C, dryer, water heater. Those appliances will come in "smart" versions. If you buy a smart version (with incentives), you will pay less for your power. The power company will have the option to signal those high-load appliances to back off/reduce. You can override this. This is vastly better than blackouts!

Look. A lot of people seem to believe our government is quite unique: First, it's a police state with an iron fist; and second it permits free speech, where they can shoot their mouth off about the unfairness. That's a bit of an insult to the people who died so we could have a participatory democracy. Of course, in a participatory democracy, you participate or die. Certainly, some of you seem to think it's fun to sit in their underwear and spam lies, petty melodrama and scare tactics into places they don't belong. So what, do you imagine the good people of the world will be so alarmed by your words that we all leap out of our chairs, go to Sacramento, Harrisburg or D.C. and participate in democracy for you? Why would we do that -- you aren't doing that!

Just a couple of points: Protests can happen against administrations and they can also happen in concert with an administration. You cite the Iraq war as an example of inspiring protests against the administration, but it also inspired protests against those protests, and those anti-protest protests were for the administration.

The phase out of coal plants may mean coal will be cheap due to supply and demand, however the phase out is a regulation that overrides supply. Cheap, abundant coal will be of no use to locomotive operators if it is illegal to use.

It may be true that not every renewable energy advocate is an anti-coal advocate, but the two schools seem to be obviously in opposition. Renewable energy goals are predicated on replacing coal energy, not just adding to it for new demand.

> If coal plants are phased out, coal won't be worth a nickel a ton. Fuel will
> be affordable again!

Absolutely and patently false. Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the coal industry knows that when the price of coal drops below the cost to mine and distribute, it stays in the ground. When that happens, no one will have any coal.

When you have no coal, the foreign companies who forced many American steel mills out of business by dumping it on our market with government subsidizes will quit making steel. The next thing to go will be the businesses who use steel. And on and on.

You cannot force a business to operate at a loss; unless, of course, it is a government agency.